IRS Claims It Has ‘Lost’ Lois Lerner’s Emails

The IRS is claiming it has lost two years of Lois Lerner’s emails. How convenient.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS has “lost” two years of emails belonging to former head of tax exempt organizations Lois Lerner. The IRS doesn’t have a record of her emails from January 2009 through April 2011, conveniently encompassing some of the same time when tea party groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution. The IRS says the loss of emails is due to a “computer crash” and claims emails from or to Lerner from the White House, Democratic members of Congress, the Treasury Department and Department of Justice cannot be located.

Imagine that, two years of email evidence targeting conservative groups, religious groups, groups that did not agree with the current administration all gone: poof. No backups. Nothing in a cloud. NSA should have them stored. Perhaps the FBI should grab those computers, there are scads of ways to recovery data off damaged hard disks. Lerner’s emails were sent to multiple destinations, WH, DOJ, Treasury, they still exist somewhere.

Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is steamed.

The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” he said in a statement. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.

On March 26, 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform hearing
that government emails are archived and it would take time to retrieve Lerner’s emails.

In 2013, The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, created a timeline of events involving the processing of potential political cases that mentions “email” as the source for much of their documentation.

We can add obstruction of justice to the long list of crimes committed by this administration.